~ A Blog on the Lands of the Bible

Monthly Archives: February 2013

The “sad, sad world” is a reference to my first response to Joolzey.
To qualify a point of my comment, Shannon might have a fragment of a legitimate point as well, but that fragment is so misstated, misplaced, and improperly expressed that not a single idea in the comment can be seen as accurate. Needless to say, asphyxxiant is incorrect as well, but at least the main point of his comment is understandable. My ‘like’ of his comment is due to my sense of fairness (I prefer to not see such a comment downvoted so much when an even more stupid response is upvoted to ridiculous heights). While I do not share his contempt of the visually offensive, and his mangling of the definition of “evolution” is atrocious, the idea the weak and suicide-prone should be encouraged to die is at least defensible (though, as I have not analyzed the case for or against this proposition in detail, I do not have a solid opinion on it as of yet). Trust me, though, that the claim that a third of teens in any government school not for mentally unstable students is “going suicidal” is patently ridiculous and is readily seen as so by any sane American over the age of 14.

By the way, the video I was commenting on earned a dislike from me for being empty of a clear and non-banal thesis.

The trio poses several questions on page 34 (in the first chapter) regarding the role of text and tradition in the composition of accurate history. The more important question of how the historian distinguishes falsehood from truth and visa versa is certainly implied throughout the first chapter. Yet, the authors spend some fourteen pages in Chapter 2, which discusses the basics of historical knowledge, not answering this most important of questions relating to the composition of accurate history. Thus, Chapter 2 is merely a 14-page exercise in the dumping of red herrings.

The trio first points out that most of our histories are derived from what they call the “testimony” of authors. Yet, this point is banal. No one denies that interpretation of data or reliance on “testimony” are essential parts of writing accurate history. The authors claim (in one of the most puzzling passages in the book) that it is a delusion to call selective acceptance of “testimony” “knowledge” (p. 37); yet, it is this delusion they propose as a solution to the problem of how the historian tells truth apart from falsehood. I have no idea what the authors meant to communicate to the reader when they wrote this passage. The trio then indulges in criticizing the concept of scientific objectivity, gleefully using post-modernist criticisms of science to buttress their near-fundamentalistic maximalism. While scientific objectivity is, indeed, impossible, as all human endeavors are affected by biases and uncertainty, to pretend it is not a laudable goal is to promote needless, futile, baseless, and internecine conflict in the historical community.

The trio points out that no observer can be objective due to that observer’s partial knowledge, points out that historical events are not replicable, and that history deals with more factors than science typically does. However, as the good Jerry Coyne says,

The way one finds out that Julius Caesar existed is pretty much the same way we find out that the supercontinent Pangaea existed—through historical reconstruction and tangible evidence.

The trio also have gripes about “implausible reductionism that seeks to explain all reality in terms of a mechanistic model of the universe”. The trio blathers on about the trend of historians in recent years to regard their field as more an art than a science. They also conflate science with certainty on the bottom of page 42. Needless to say, there remain many uncertainties in science and uncertainty does not liberate the historian from the need to provide evidence to back up his or her claims.

The trio then separates historians into three classes: “ostriches”, who refuse to acknowledge the death of “scientific” history and presumably believe objectivity is still an achievable goal (I view it as a laudable and unachievable goal) for the historian, postmodernists, who deny that any realistic vision of the past can be reconstructed, and maximalists. However, as I have pointed out in my review of the first chapter, one cannot be a maximalist in all things. Though the trio speaks of placing tradition in its “proper place”, it appears to me that the trio would not regard creation myths as recording a real history. Any person has a “principled suspicion of tradition” in regards to folktales. Even the most ardent minimalist would accept that 2 Kings 18 has a “proper place” in the historical reconstruction of Sennacherib’s campaign. Thus, the central question of history composition-how one tells truth from untruth-is left unaddressed in this chapter.

The trio points out that if children were not gullible, they would not survive. However, surely the authors accept that gullibility in itself is not a good thing? Do they seriously believe that the various bits of religion and other related superstition mothers in, say, Pakistan, India, or Nigeria tell to their young children, warrants consideration as reliable truth? I doubt it. However, rather than blaming the blatant untruth of plenty of received tradition as the reason for the historian’s “principled suspicion” of it, the trio instead blames “individualist ideology”, which, in reality, is mere (often warranted) suspicion of bias and misleading selectivity in the historian’s sources by the historian.

The trio then suggests that archaeology is more a matter of interpretation than fact. However, a destruction layer has a story, as do chronologically diagnostic sherds, imitation wares, and imported artifacts. Archaeological remains do not just pop out from a vacuum. They do, indeed, require interpretation, but no amount of interpretation can make Jericho become inhabited in the late 13th century BC or be destroyed as a fortified city later than the late 16th/early 15th century BC. While it is true that “testimony” “helps in the choice of where to survey or dig, imparts the sense of the general shape of the history one might expect to find in any given place, enables a tentative allocation of destruction levels to specific, already-known events, and permits material finds to be correlated with certain named peoples of the past”, it cannot make the Joshua 15 town list correspond to the historical reality of Late Bronze Age Palestine. Though interpretation may be “fraught with difficulty” in some instances, this does not mean archaeological remains are a Rorschach test. The authors do not even mention prehistoric archaeology in Chapter 2. The Early Bronze Age and Chalcolithic are not ‘dark ages’ in Palestinian history, as probably imagined by the authors. Contra the trio, “objective knowledge” is “available here, independent of testimony about the past”.

The authors then proceed to make baseless assurances that they think “critical thinking” is a good ability for a historian to have. They throw in a good ole’ “Neither blind faith in testimony, norradical suspicion in response to it, is necessary.” to solidify their status as sanctimonious assholes. They then throw in their “we generally regard it…” which I heartily mocked in the review of Chapter 1. They then utter bizarre gripes about “method”, strangely pointing out that “for example, if we are Caucasians [their misuse of the word, not mine], and consistently accept “insider” accounts of reality offered by Caucasians over and against “outsider” accounts such as those offered by Asians [sic!]*-then we are considered prejudiced, not intelligent.”. This rule (to consistently accept ‘insider’ accounts) may be either useful or completely wrong-headed, depending on the situation. Since the trio do not bother to elaborate on the situation, we (the readers) cannot know of the actual usefulness of this rule in the hypothetical scenario the authors have set up.

The trio then offer a surprising denial of the general priority of primary sources to secondary ones. Needless to say, it is often the case that we simply do not know how well a secondary source has reported information from a primary source, and potentially useful information given by a primary source tends to be distorted or omitted when reported by a secondary source. More often than not, a broad picture of the past can already be painted by historians today; thus, primary sources, with a more narrow perspective, can give us more original information than do secondary sources. Would we not love to have even half of the “testimony” of the primary sources of Herodotus? Though, as the authors say, “We must exercise our judgement on a case-by-case basis.”, method can help historians in their quest for an accurate portrait of the past. Though the authors dismiss “the mold of those who have brought mathematical probability theory to bear on testimony”, mathematical probability theory can, in fact, be quite useful to both the historian and to the average layman.

The trio closes this chapter with claims that all knowledge about history is really a matter of faith in “testimony”. Needless to say, the existence of a destruction layer is not a matter of faith. Nor is the existence of stele fragments of Sargon II at Samaria. What is “faith”? It is “belief in the absence of evidence”. But is belief of an account in the Amarna letters consistent with other accounts really “belief in the absence of evidence”? Often, the text itself is sufficient evidence to accept a claim, as long as the claim is not extraordinary and the author of the text is known to have limits on his/her possible unreliability. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Ordinary claims require ordinary evidence.

The trio claims that ancient historians were just as critical as modern ones. However, this claim is manifestly untrue. Hardly any ancient historian was an atheist. Hardly any accepted the dictum that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Though the ancients may have been just as concerned with truth as moderns, they simply did not have the tools of Skepticism we moderns have today. However the authors may deny it, that is a fact.

* Quite a few Caucasians are Asians!

UPDATE (April 5 2013): If by “Caucasians”, the trio mean to refer to “whites”, they are perpetuating a Biblical myth (p. 24). The white race is sometimes referred to as the Caucasian because a certain German scientist named Johann Friedrich Blumenbach considered the white race to be the original race off Noah’s Ark, and, as we all know, Urartu=Armenia=Caucasus!

A state is a group of people with a claimed and largely effective ultimate total control over the use of force, law-making, and taxation in a given area.

An empire is a state ruling over ethnically heterogeneous territories whose inhabitants have no representation in determining that state’s decisions while being taxed by that state.

Reasoning: Much like modern Israel’s colonization of the West Bank does not make it an empire, England’s colonization of Bermuda and Virginia didn’t make it an empire. Modern Israel’s taxation of native inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, however, did make it an empire.

Imperialization is the process of the transformation of a state into an empire.

Imperialism is either the policy, behavior, or ideology directly associated with establishment and maintenance of empire.

A colonist is a person who emigrates from a metropole and does not owe allegiance to the native government of the country in which he or she settles or a descendant of such a person.

Colonies are settlements inhabited by colonists from the same metropole in an area outside the metropole.

My reasoning behind this definition is that Judea did not become a colony of Rome in 6 AD; thus, India did not become a colony of the United Kingdom in 1858. It is also nonsensical to claim that Tyre’s actual colonies and tributary states can both be considered colonies as they both paid tribute to Tyre. Colonies include Jamestown, Carthage, Katzrin, colonial Lima, and Portugese Macau.

Colonization is the establishment of colonies.

Colonialism is either the policy, behavior, or ideology directly associated with establishment and maintenance of colonies.

While I have been reading George Grena’s “Evolution Science”, I have also been reading a book I have had for some time; Provan, Long, and Longman’s “Biblical History of Israel”. As I found its history quite pedestrian, I had put it aside. It was only my writing of my first part of my “Non-Biblical History” that prompted me to begin reading its large part on methodology and historiography in the beginning.

The history begins with a review of the ideas of the minimalists, most notably, K. Whitelam. He has reviewed P&L&L’s book here. I agree with all his review except for a few minor points and the entirety of the last two pages (Zionism isn’t a scary monster under the bed!). The authors describe his ideas and offer a few objections to them, seemingly asserting that ideology need not contradict historical motive, that non-Biblical histories of Palestine have their shortcomings (e.g., conflicting interpretations of the evidence, reliance on biased sources, inevitable historian’s bias), that minimalists are guilty of selective skepticism, and that non-biblical sources are subject to ambiguous interpretation and cannot write a history of Iron Age Palestine on their own. The trio also points out that Phillip Davies is seemingly a bit too reliant on the now (as of 2008-12)-shown-to-be Hasmonean Ezra-Nehemiah on his reconstruction of how Genesis-Kings was composed.

While the points P&L&L make about the limits of non-Biblical history are correct, this does not mean we should pretend that the Biblical account of history is not mostly fiction.

The trio then writes an excellent denunciation of Soggin, Miller, and Hayes; those who arbitrarily set a point at which Biblical history becomes a reliable source of tradition. Miller and Hayes set that point at around 1 Kings, while Soggin sets it at Judges. The trio have a field day with pointing out the hypocrisy of those who would disqualify Joshua as useful for the reconstruction of the history of the West Bank in the Late Bronze Age while qualifying Judges as useful for the reconstruction of the history of Palestine in the Iron I or 1 Kings as useful for the reconstruction of the history of Palestine in Iron II. Needless to say, the trio use the argument against this hypocrisy for their own ends, making themselves look like the utmost of maximalists. The biblical traditions tell us not necessarily about the history of Palestine, the minimalists (and I) claim, but about the traditions that existed about the history of Palestine during the time of the composition of the Biblical text. External evidence may help us pinpoint the origin of these traditions, but we should never use tradition as our guidebook for the reconstruction of the history of Iron Age Palestine.

The trio also criticize Wellhausen for his hypocrisy in regards to rejecting the historicity of the Patriarchs while continuing to accept a historical Moses and Joshua. Needless to say, fewer authors make not more historicity.

The trio then write a moderately long ‘history of historiography’ from the 19th century even unto this day, describing the descent of the role of tradition in history, seemingly implying that this is somehow not a good thing. Imagine if we could use 19th century Palestinian Arab folk traditions to write a history of Palestine from the Bronze Age even unto this day. The trio then discusses the sillier formerly widely-accepted ideas of Martin Noth, pointing out that more authors does not necessarily indicate more historicity.

On a side note, Whitelam quotes this hilarious statement from Provan in 2000: It’s from Chapter 2 of the book.

“we generally regard it, indeed, as a sign of emotional or mental imbalance if people ordinarily inhabit a culture of distrust in testimony at the level of principle, and most of us outside mental institutions do not in fact inhabit such a universe.”
-Needless to say, Provan has never been to Detroit, read a tabloid, or used Google. I’m still certain, though, that he applies his childlike naivete regarding testimony very selectively-how else could he survive reading a magazine ad section? Does Provan think The Onion is a real news source? That internet ads are something to be clicked on? That Iraq really did pose a threat to the United States in 2002? It is a great mystery. Whitelam writes of how Provan may justify Baalam’s talking ass as historical by using the old quip “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (a claim that is only true under some circumstances).

Recently, I have heard the surprisingly common whine that Khufu’s tomb is neither Khufu’s nor a tomb. Needless to say, this claim is ridiculous; a cartouche of Khufu painted by the builders of the Great Pyramid has been found in a Great Pyramid relieving chamber (Campbell’s chamber, the top-most). See here for original sketch (not meant to be a photograph!) of the cartouche bearing the name “Khufu”. See here and here for photographs of this cartouche. See here for a video of this cartouche. The marks on the west end of Nelson’s Chamber preserve Khufu’s Horus name, Medjedu. Khufu’s full birth name, Khnum-Khuf, is mentioned several times in Lady Arbuthnot’s chamber. Apparently, one cartouche bears only the name Khnum, though it must be remembered the Vyse sketches are not always reliable. For a debunking of nonsense regarding the epigraphy of the inscriptions, see here.

Also, mummies have been found in pyramids-parts of the body of Neferefre have been found in his pyramid, the mummy of Sesheshet has been found in her pyramid, and, apparently, the body of Iput I has been found in her pyramid. Others have probably been found before, but I am no Egyptologist and I do not know of them. In any case, there is no doubt the Old and Middle Kingdom pyramids are tombs, no matter how many bodies have been relocated in the several thousand years between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the nineteenth century.

2. Life has been around on this planet for over two billion years. Humans have been around for over fifty thousand years. Civilization has been around for under fifteen thousand years. Humans have been using the telegraph for under two centuries. Humans have been in space for less than a century. Humans have found absolutely no reason to send people to outside the solar system in all recorded history. This has to be remembered by any idiot who uses the Drake equation as evidence for Ancient Assonaut visitation.

3. Even if interstellar travel was possible, there is little probability Ancient Assonauts would end up on this planet rather than some other.

5. There is no archaeological evidence for Ancient Assonauts visiting this planet.

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